Hi,

this is the old feed for the Deli SF and it's not in use anymore. We have updated our blogging system, current blog entries can be found here.

This week Daytrotter released 3 exclusive recordings from San Francisco's psych folk foursome Thee Oh Sees. Two of the recordings, Destroyed Fortress Reappears / Gold and Rudy Go Home are from 2009's Help, while the third recording, Mega Feast, has yet to be released. You can download all of the tracks here.

Thee Oh Sees will be back in San Francisco playing The Eagle Tavern on January 14th.

-Nicole

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The community arts space Artists Television Access (ATA) will be celebrating their 25th Anniversary this weekend with two evenings of fantastic entertainment. Friday, December 11, 2009, 7:30 pm at a FREE film & video screening party that includes work by founders, staff and associates from early 80s to the present - 29 different artists in total.

Sunday, December 13, 2009 will be the 25th Anniversary Fundraiser Party. An all-day event with live music from a slew of Bay Area musicians, performances, installations, bbq and a raffle to win stuff from a bunch of local businesses. Bands lined up for the day The Lambs, Jeremy Dalmas and Friends, Young Prisms, Bare Wires, Ash Reiter, Kacey Johansing, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma & Paul Clipson, Eats Tapes, Psychic Reality and Rank/Xerox. 11am-10pm, $10. Visit their site for a full schedule.

-Nicole

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I have to admit that I haven't watched a lot of the music based prime time TV shows that I hear people talking about. I've never seen an episode of Glee and I think I could name you 2 American Idols, but my ears perked up this week when I heard that a song from Oakland based Oona was featured on So You Think You Can Dance last week. The soulful pop ballad Tore My Heart provides the foundation for a very mysterious and haunting choreographed dance. Since the show aired, the song broke the Top 100 iTunes singles which is a pretty big deal for any independent musician.It's good to know that the big media corporations are paying attention to independent artists in the Bay Area.

-Nicole

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James & Evander Presents: Peter Stanley, The Waste Band, & Silian Rail at Book Zoo.

All bands will be playing acoustic sets and there will be a reading by Andrew Macy. The best part is that it's free! Now that it's the holiday time, free is a good thing.

Saturday, December 5th. Book Zoo [6395 Telegraph Avenue Oakland, California 94609]. Free!

Just in time for the holidays, Bay Area Girls Rock Camp will host its first ever silent auction featuring art, handmade crafts, and seasonal treasures donated by local artists and popular Bay Area institutions such as Pixar, Oaklandish, and more. All proceeds will go towards our programs that serve girls all over the Bay Area.

The night will be an exciting evening of art, music, and festivities and is open to the whole family. Do all of your holiday shopping while raising money for BAGRC! Camper alumni band Poison Apple Pie will play an enchanting set of original and cover songs and the female-owned and operated Local 123 Cafe will provide snacks and beverages.

Friday, December 4th, 7-10pm Local 123 Cafe [2049 San Pablo Ave, Oakland].

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The San Francisco 5 piece, Stomacher, sounds like they listen to a lot of Radiohead. The first CD under their new moniker (the band was formerly known as In Reverent Fear) plays like what could be a more commercial Radiohead record from a few years ago. Jarrod Taylor’s vocal style sounds like a more angsty Thom Yorke without being a complete rip off. His voice carries the songs with a slow and relaxed delivery, at times layering with itself to create a lush blanket of voices. Sentimental Education has a very diverse 10 songs, constantly varying in tempo and arrangement without making the songs feel out of place.

Stomacher sounds more at home with the slower more sparse songs on Sentimental Education. “The Devil” features a lush organ sound, twinkling electronics, and a bed of strings slowly brewing for three and a half minutes below the high and slow vocal. The album closer “Untitled/Dark Divider” has a consistent acoustic guitar rhythm and a catchy yet relaxing electric guitar melody. The song builds but never becomes overly epic, rather blurring itself into a murky mess, drowning Jarrod’s voice before returning again to its original form.

Sentimental Education may at times sounds a little too much like it’s influences but never the less is still impressive.

-Glenn Jackson

Stomacher play Bottom of the Hill Saturday, December 19th with Mata Leon and Halfway.

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Geographer's Innocent Ghosts is one of the ear catching gems from 2009. Their latest single Kites, available on vinyl only from Tricycle Records, features a dreamy and angelic cover version of New Order's Age of Consent as a b-side. Naturally, The Deli SF was excited to hear that Geographer will begin to wind down the year by opening for 25 year rock veterans Poi Dog Pondering at Slim's on Friday December 4th.

-Nicole

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Noah from Blisses B is under the microscope this week. The San Francisco folk rockers fist LP You Should was released earlier this year.

What food item best describes your music?
Macaroni and Cheese. It's something we can all eat and agree on, random cheeses too please.

What instrument have you wanted to include but have yet to find a way to fit into your sound?
Pedal Steel Guitar. I own one but we haven't incorporated it into any songs yet. Nick, Ben and I were fiddling with it last practice and it is coming off the bench soon.

Embarrassing childhood memory?
Fracturing my elbow chasing Rod the Ice Cream Man. People get such a kick out of the story, all I got was a scar on my right arm that grew with me into adulthood.

What musical artist would you like to grab a beer with?
Bill Withers. He has been an integral part of my whole life, some of my first memories were bobbing my head to his cassette tapes in the backseat of my parents car.

And finally, time travel or space travel?
Space travel. Any direction/length of time is fine. I get the feeling the take off part would be my favorite part...

If your band has answers to The Deli's Five Questions forward them to sfeditor@thedelimagazine.com.

-Nicole

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The Impediments are four young rockers from Berkeley (High School that is). Their debut self-titled CD holds nothing back, furiously pumping their punky garage rock from beginning to end almost sounding like a reissue of a forgotten record from the late 70s punk rock scene, but not quite. Which is a good thing! The production of Greg Ashley fits the music well without sounding like a complete copy of the music that it was influenced by. A heavy bed of murky bass and drums and the occasional piano leave room for a complete onslaught of rock guitar riffs and solos as well as some exceptionally humorous and sometimes crude lyrics.

There is an undeniable and unrelenting energy to the eleven songs found on Impediments. If you don’t find yourself tapping along to every part of “Violence” with its, well, badass guitar solo or the simpleness of “You Want a Square” then you probably have no rock and roll in you. This record is way cooler than the music most of us made in high school and the aesthetic sense and musicianship are rather impressive. A great CD from four young guys with probably the coolest record collections at Berkeley High.

Impediments is out now on Happy Parts Recordings.

-Glenn Jackson

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The Deli SF has received a transmission from the San Francisco band Railcars. Transmission can be seen below:

railcars has a show @ thee parkside, which is a super rare ALL AGES show @ thee parkside (that hardly ever happens there.) and its on nov 19th. its @ the end of our 8 week US tour.

this will be railcars, ONLY show in san francisco for all of 2009 AND 2010.

::end of transmission::

You heard it here folks, an all ages show and the last one the band will be doing in SF until 2011. Samuelroy, Pregnant and Felt Drawings also play. 6 bucks. Consider your calenders informed.

-Nicole

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San Francisco's B and Not B hauled themselves all over the Mission playing Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song out of a rented van. They documented it and have managed to generate a pretty decent amount of buzz.

B and Not B's record is due out soon but in the meantime, check out their site, sign up for their mailing list and get a sneek peek with a free Mp3.

Also, on a similar note, they've also helped me deal with the PTSD that came after seeing this same song used in the trailer for the 3rd Shrek movie. Thanks guys!

-Nicole

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This Saturday, November 21st at El Rio The Deli SF is proud to sponsor SFxSD!

SFxSD was created to put a spotlight on the indie bands from San Francisco and San Diego that are constantly touring to each others cities. The 2nd annual SFxSD features some of the top bands from both cities playing together all day long at a festival with an outdoor and indoor stage, free BBQ, drink specials, live silkscreening (Studio Nico) with BYOS (bring your own shirt) grab bag give-aways and tons of good music. The lineup features Music For Animals (SF) Transfer (SD) Lilofee (SF) Butterfly Bones (SF) Long Live Logos (SD) Lucky Jesus (SF) and DJ X Boyfriend - Presented by SF Pubcrawl and sponsored by the Deli SF, Littlebook, SF Intercom, Studio Nico, San Franpsycho and Kung Fu Tacos.

See you there!

-Nicole

If schizophrenia had a sound it might well be said that 60-Watt Kid’s We Came From the Bright Side comes close to capturing it. Perhaps that is too loaded of a term, but listening to the album as it wanders through a soundscape with no clear referents to time and space, ebbing and flowing in erratic changes, the cavernous sound definitely culls a certain sense of madness. This can be a dangerous attribute for music but 60-Watt Kid implores this dissonance very effectively throughout this album.

Music such as this conjures up distinct similarities to the sonic experimentations of bands such as Animal Collective (a band I personally take issue with). Experimentation in this vein can be a precarious place for musicians to stand. On the one hand there is the experimentation that is far to readily granted a band (such as Animal Collective) that ventures into the territory of weird for the sake of being weird; the function being a means to garner credential in a community that desires to define itself as an opposition to a mainstream sound, forsaking musical communication for a chance to be an avant-garde that in reality generates nothing newer than a desire to be an unqualifiable outsider. In the other there is a genuine use of complexity that doesn’t revel in it’s own quirkiness but actually pushes the boundaries of sound while still being able to reach a listener using something of the conventional. The tension between these two really begs the question of how as musicians can we strive towards the avant-garde without the pretension of forsaking association with the audience for the ideologically pure weird?

We Came From the Bright Side sits in a comfortable balance in this spectrum. It embodies it’s own complexity but still holds on to a sense of melody and convention. Divorcing itself certainly from one convention, 60-Watt Kid’s music is mostly not centered around the lyrics. The narrative of the music is conveyed primarily through the feeling and tenor, with the lyrics taking more of a secondary role as yet another instrument and sound. With that in mind it seems more appropriate to discuss and understand We Came From the Bright Side through it’s movements. Opening with “2012,” the album launches itself into its ethereal tonality and lays out what is perhaps one of the likely recurrent themes of the album: the warmth of connection amidst the cold repetitive of the sound of technology… well maybe.

The album continues from here ascending in a scattered meteoric rise into it’s eerie outsider sound with the title track “We Came From the Bright Side.” The driving guitar line and explosive bursts of electronic accents lurch the listener upward and onward on this chaotic voyage.

Following the somewhat glorious sounding ascension, the album takes a disturbing turn into tension with the aptly title track “Pressure.” Whatever levity the beginning of the journey may have had becomes tainted with a tangible amount of awkwardness and the weight of the album’s own madness becomes disconcerting. There is some tenderness in this discomfort but a certain menace lingers about the middle of the album, breaking for it’s inevitable crash with the equally appropriately named “2012 Breakdown.” The frenzied journey comes crashing down like a space ship rapidly descending from orbit, and we are left stranded somewhere tranquil, far from the lunacy that brought us here.

All in all I’d say We Came From the Bright Side is a remarkable success. It’s thoroughly engaging and a real pleasure to listen to from beginning to end. It is engaging enough to engender something of a cosmic and conflicted adventure burdened by the insanity of technology. Take some time to yourself to sit down with this album and listen to the celestial madness of the space it drags you to.

-Ada Lann

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